Watercolor Materials List

Below is a list of materials and brands I recommend for my watercolor class. Quality matters a lot when painting with watercolor. Do your best to look for deals on better quality supplies, and try to resist inexpensive but cheap quality materials. I recommend shopping at www.cheapjoe’s.com, www.jerrysartarama.com or www.amazon.com online and The Artist and Craftsman Supply in downtown Berkeley. Be sure to use a coupons for Blick and Michael’s since they tend to be more expensive.

Prices below are based on prices I found on amazon, and do not include shipping.

Size #10 round watercolor brush ($5-$15). If #10 is not available, you can go up or down a size. Princeton is a good, reasonably priced brand. Watercolor brushes have short handles and soft bristles that come to a point when wet. Synthetic brushes are springy, and animal hair brushes (real or imitation) are softer and hold a ton of paint, and both are fine to paint with. Really cheap brushes shed hairs and don’t come to a fine point. You can try brushes in other shapes in class and decide if you they are worth purchasing.

Arches Cold Press 140 lb watercolor paper. Good paper matters even more than paint. I recommend 9” x 12” pad ($11-25) or a 7″ x 10″ watercolor block ($20-40). If money is tight, buy a single 22” x 30” sheet for $8 from the Artist and Craftsman and cut it down to your preferred sizes.

Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Colour Paint Sketchers’ Pocket Box- 12 colors ($17-30) This set is a quick way to get a range of colors at an affordable price. Van Gogh is also pretty good and inexpensive. Another way to save money without losing quality is to buy a plastic palette and tubes of paint in primary colors (quinacridone red, lemon yellow, ultramarine and phthalo blue). Do NOT buy Pentel, Angora, Arteza, Koi, Sargent or Arteza brand paints- these are very poor quality and don’t perform well.

Additional tools you should bring and probably already own are:

Paper towels, a 1-qt sized clean plastic container to hold water, number 2 pencil, a pencil sharpener and an eraser. Eventually you may want to bring salt, Pigma Micron .5 mm felt tip pens, and removable art masking fluid, although these are not essential.